StarCraft 2 dev didn’t think it could be an eSports hit outside South Korea

StarCraft 2 director Dustin Browder and his team had doubts that the game could prove a popular eSports hit outside of South Korea. However, as we now know it’s doing every well in the Western circuit, but for a while it was a real concern at Blizzard.

Speaking with Games.on.net, Browder Said of the US eSports scene, “eSports had all been a Korean phenomenon, or largely a Korean phenomenon. We saw some certainly for WarCraft 3 in Europe as well but … in the States we hadn’t seen anything like that yet.

“When we first launched Wings [of Liberty], we were like maybe, maybe we’ll be able to go to a theatre somewhere in the United States and have like fifty guys and watch eSports. That was the win, that was our huge victory we had in our heads … maybe we can get just get a couple of games, get a couple of guys up there and maybe a couple of thousand dollars up there and it’ll be awesome. And then we started seeing MLG happen over and over again.”

But luckily for Blizzard the game has proved to be a hit in the Western competitive circuit, and we saw the ESET UK Masters tournament play out last weekend. We have the full stream here if you want to watch the matches again.

The game’s popularity outside South Korea continues to grow and we’re sure we’ll see plenty more StarCraft 2 tournaments in the West moving forward.